A Regional Climate Analysis and Development of Climate Chapters for the Natural Resources Condition Assessments for Mount Rainier National Park and North Cascades National Park Complex
Project ID: J8W07110028
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: University of Washington
Fiscal Year: 2011
Initial Funding: $13,791
Total Funding: $13,791
Project Type: Research
Project Disciplines: Biological
National Park: Pacific West Region Washington
Principal Investigator: Littell, Jeremy
Agreement Technical Representative: Samora, Barbara
Abstract: This project involves the preparation of the climate chapters for the National Park Service (NPS) Natural Resources Condition Assessment (NRCA) for Mount Rainier National Park (MORA) and North Cascades National Park Complex (NOCA), and provides resources for the University of Washington (UW) Climate Impacts Group to analyze additional NPS and other weather station or snow course data and compare them to existing long term stations in the Historical Climate Network and the more dispersed cooperative weather network. These networks form the observations underlying spatial interpolation with historical climate data and downscaling of future global climate model projections, so putting these stations in the context of the longer and better understood historical stations will help identify potential uses of the parks’ data as well as understand monitoring gaps that may exist. The UW will incorporate information generated from these analyses, along with existing information on historical and climate trends into the Climate chapters of the NPS NRCAs. NPS will be involved in several ways, including providing data for the UW to analyze and working with the UW to interpret these data, and in the preparation of the NRCA climate chapters. This project will benefit the public by providing an understanding of historic, current and projected future climate in the region that encompasses the Cascades Mountain areas. This knowledge will help inform land managers in the north and central Washington Cascades about climate change projections that can be used in future climate adaptation planning. Results from the study will be available on the NPS and North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership websites for use by the general public to understand how climate change may affect this region.
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